Help with searching LINX

Introduction

LINX is the combined database of the Auckland, Wellington, and Canterbury libraries of the New Zealand Law Society. LINX contains index references to Court of Appeal and High Court Judgments, and Journal Articles and Texts held by the three libraries.

Search Overview:

The search screen you were looking at allows you select any combination of "collections" to search at the same time, i.e. Articles, Judgments or Texts.

Search Boxes: There are two search "boxes" into which you can type your search words. The first box must be used in any search, but the second box is optional. If you do want to use the second box, you can combine the searches in the two boxes using the "radio" buttons on top of the second search box.

Radio Buttons: If you choose the default "Required" button, then the two searches will both have to be present in a document for it to be retrieved (Boolean AND)

If you choose the "Important" button, then the first search must be present for a document to be found, and if the second search is also present in the document, then its relevance Score will be higher, and it will usually show up higher in the document result list.

If you choose the "Excluded" button, then the second search must not be present in the documents found in the first search.

Zones: You can select any combination of the "Casename", "Judge", "Cases" etc zones to limit your search to those document elements. If you choose the default "All", then your search will cover all the text of the document including Casenames, Subjects and Cases etc.

Dates: You can edit the Date boxes to limit your search to a particular time period.

Simple search:

The Knowledge Basket search software searches for word stems by default. If you wish to have an exact match of your keyword, put quotes around it e.g. "esplanade".
If you don't use quotes then you will retrieve grammatical variations of the word stem e.g. broadcasting without quotes would retrieve broadcasting, broadcast, broadcasts, broadcaster, broadcasted.

Punctuation Punctuation is not searchable, therefore use spaces instead of punctuation e.g. co operation.

Full text search: A Full text search is possible if you tick the "All" zone. It is not possible if you choose to limit your search to particular zones, by ticking the zone name. Full text searches can be very elaborate. For example you can type in many search terms, combine them with any of the available operators, and nest them within any level of brackets. You can do this in both search boxes and then combine the two search statements using the radio buttons. The operators available and more search details are covered in more depth below.

Stop Words There are no stop words which means you can search for phrases such as "as is where is" and retrieve them reliably.

Full Text Searching:
  • To get started, at the query form, simply type a word or words that you would expect to find in documents of interest to you.
  • Stemming - the Verity Search Engine searches for word stems by default e.g. tax will retrieve documents containing tax, taxes, taxation but not taxi.
  • To force an exact match, e.g. "tax" place speech marks around the word. (documents retrieved will contain the word tax.)
  • Wildcard truncation The query tax* will retrieve all words beginning with the string tax, thus documents retrieved would contain tax, taxes, taxation and taxi.
  • Phrase searching - you may search for a phrase by typing in the words in consecutive order, separated by spaces. For example, unnecessary force.
    Where and is part of the phrase, e.g. pulp "and" paper. - Use speech marks around the word "and" to ensure that the query is treated as a phrase. (Without the speech marks the search engine will assume that you are looking for documents containing both words, but in any order).

Sample Search:

Formulate your query: - what is it you want to find?

e.g. You have been asked to find judgments concerning the use of water resources for electricity

  • Type in your query: water and (electricity, power, energy)
  • Restrict your search to subjects by selecting the appropriate zone.
  • Sort the Results by Score

Boolean Operators:

Using <and> <or> <not>

  • Use these connectors to make more specific queries.
    For example, water and electricity will identify documents containing both these words but in any order.
  • In contrast, water or river or lake will return vastly more results because you have broadened the search to documents which contain either word!
  • Searching for water not sea will narrow the search to documents containing the word water but not the word sea.
    (n.b. you do not have to use angle brackets around the operators in these queries).

Proximity Searching:

Using proximity operators such as: <near> <phrase> <sentence> and <paragraph>.

  • Near:- use to make associations between keywords e.g. children mother
  • Sentence:- similar in application to the near proximity operator e.g. children mother
  • Exact phrase: - used by default if you separate words with spaces.eg fishing boat
  • To retrieve Lewis & Enting you would type: lewis enting (an ampersand is not a searchable character).
n.b. Make sure that the select zones is on "all" when you use the proximity operators, as they will not work in for example, court.

Zone (Field) Searching:

LINX zones:

  • Casename
  • Title
  • Judge
  • Reported
  • Court
  • Subjects
  • Cases
  • Words
  • Statutes

Zone searches may be performed by clicking on a specific box for that zone e.g. Judge which will will retrieve documents containing that name in the judge's names field.
e.g. put mcgechan in the search box, click on judge in the select zones, and you will retrieve judgments with McGechan cited as judge in those cases.
or
Regulations e.g. children in the search box, click on Regulations in the zone, and you will retrieve documents containing the word children in the regulations cited.

Zones searching with Boolean
You can get very specific results by combining boolean with zones. For example, you can exclude types of courts(use the abbreviations cc, hc, fc)
e.g. "Palmerston North not hc" in the search box, click on Court in the zone, and you will retrieve judgments from The Palmerson North Family Court, and Palmerston North Criminal Court but not the High Court.

Displaying Records:

  • Records may be displayed by: Score or Date.
  • Records are displayed 25 at a time.
  • Records are retrieved by clicking on the title of the document displayed in the results view. (This retrieves the complete article)